Monday this week we received the Letters of Acceptance (or Approval, not sure which word is correct) for our two boys in China!  I guess I knew this was coming at some point, but it hit me kind of hard.  I was numb for most of the day, I think.  But when DW got home and we started talking about it, I kind of lost it.  I started crying and couldn't stop for awhile.  I guess the dam broke and the tears (of relief) flowed.  I didn't even realize I had been "stressed" over waiting for it.  I think I knew I was on a pretty thin line, veering over it some days into happiness and content and then back over the other side some days into a little bit of depression and impatience.  Everyone else in my family could probably tell you that THEY knew I was stressed, hehehe.

I am past the numbness now and moved on to excitement!  Our I-800 paperwork is gone, and we are expecting approval in 3 weeks or so.  We are praying for all things to go as quickly as possible from here on out BECAUSE, if we don't get to China in September, we will be looking at tripled hotel expenses for October because of Trade Fair in Guangzhou the 3rd week of Oct.  And did I mention the first week of Oct is a holiday week?  I can't make any of this work out right, but I know God has already figured it out so I will just leave Him to it and go with the flow.

We met with our social worker yesterday and realized that we have to come up with an additional $10K (ish) for expenses for our 2nd boy.  Geesh.  Just when I thought we had about 1/2 of what we needed to travel... I knew of this number, because I remember running across it while we were applying for grants and such a few months ago.  But, for some reason I dismissed it in my mind thinking that WE were capable of being much more frugal than that when we travel and we would not spend that much.  The number is mostly due to 2nd orphanage donation and visa and other paperwork, not so much hotel and food expenses (duh).    Either way, it will come, somehow.  I am peaceful about it.  As one of my friends said yesterday, "Well, it is not time to travel yet, so the $$ is not here yet."  So refreshingly simple.

Today this song popped into my head.  It pretty much captures my heart right now, and hopefully always.

How in the world do bloggers have time to, you know...blog?!?  I have had this thing pinned on my board for months.  Have I even opened it to see what it says inside?  Heck no.  Who has the time to read endless articles that tell you more things you could, would, or should be doing?!?

I must be the slowest person on the planet.  Yesterday my daughter (almost 17 yrs.) accused me of being a slow packer.  "Mom," she said, "it should never take you longer than 30 minutes to pack.  Why does it take you 3 days?!?"  Oh, I don't know...maybe because if the minutest thing gets left behind when we go on vacation, like say, ketchup, guess who is taking time out of vacation to run to the local supermarket while everyone else is fishing and swimming and laying in hammocks?  Well, it used to be me...now I have teenage drivers who will readily volunteer to drive the 5 miles down the windy mountain roads to go to the store for me so I can stay at the cabin.  Because that is so much more relaxing for me ;-)

But here I am sitting at this computer "blogging" instead of packing.  I am easily distracted.  Maybe I'm not slow, just unfocused....hmmmmm.  Why am I even at the computer?!?  Oh yeah, I did have "Blog New Items" on my list today.  But when I got the camera to post pictures of the new dress and shirt I made last week so that I could blog about them...my computer would not recognize my SD card so I fooled around with it a bit and realized it was not an SD card at all but something called an "Adapter".  What does that even mean?  I think it must mean "if you put this card in your camera, it will look like you have actually taken pictures and you can flip through them and delete the ones that are blurry and keep the ones you really want, but when you take this 'adapter' out of your camera there is actually nothing there."  Obviously photography is not my thing either. 
I need to stick to sewing.

I have very little hope that I will "build a better blog" or even if I do, transform into a real blogger between now and next month so...see you in about 30 days.  That seems to be about how often I can reasonably come up with a post.

Baseball and Beginning of Summer

Today is Harrison's last baseball game in the league he has been playing in since we moved to Birmingham.  He ages out and will have to find somewhere else to play.  I was looking back this week and found some pics of when he first started to play baseball...

There are not too many other things that I enjoy more than watching Harrison play baseball.  He truly loves the game and it is a joy to watch.

Ten years!  It is so hard to believe!  Bring on the next ten!